The more things change, the more they stay the same. I recently came across a document from 1977 that speaks volumes about the seemingly endless battle over how we should vote, and what the rules should be.
It’s a draft of a press release issued by Maine’s former governor, Ken Curtis, who Jimmy Carter had named head of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. Curtis was responding to a “direct mail” fundraiser, a then-new technique, from the Republican National Committee claiming the “wrong people” would soon be voting.
Congressman Guy Vander Jagt, RNC chair and Curtis’s opposite number, specialized in the kind of press releases that then seemed inflammatory and unfortunately now seem routine.
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Vander Jagt was attacking what we now know as Election Day voter registration, or “same day,” which the congressman referred to as “walk-in voting.” He charged that, under this system, voters were “herded in from skid row like sheep,” and said that “for a few dollars” they would vote as instructed.
The mailing concluded with a photo of a poor neighborhood with people sitting in doorways, and saying “Votes could be bought and sold in skid rows like this, if we have walk-in voter registration. Please send your contribution today, so we can defeat the liberal Democrats who support this radical change.”
Maine had earlier adopted same-day registration as part of a series of voting reforms with Curtis as governor when the Legislature, throughout his two terms, was controlled by Republicans. The legislative record shows that lawmakers overwhelmingly saw this as a common sense way to ease access to the ballot at a time when voting in presidential years had declined nationally in four straight elections.
Time passes and memories fade. In 2011, Maine Republicans, in charge of both the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time since 1966, decided to end Election Day registration. Democrats immediately organized a people’s veto campaign and that November the GOP law was vetoed overwhelmingly, by 60.5%.
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That campaign is widely credited with helping Democrats retake the House and Senate in 2012. And one can hear an echo of Vander Jagt in Maine Republican Chair Charlie Webster’s comments following those losses, telling an interviewer that “In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day.” After criticism from fellow Republicans Webster apologized, but was replaced the following year.
Back in the day, Ken Curtis pointed out that allowing same-day registration with proof of residence – the standard Maine still has – helped turn around lagging participation. The states then with same-day registration – Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Oregon – ranked in the top five in participation, a list that has changed little since then.
North Dakota also has high turnout; it’s the only state that has never required voters to register.
What does Maine's Question 1 say?
Now we come to Question 1 on the Nov. 4 ballot. In addition to requiring voters to show photo ID on top of other forms of proof, it makes a variety of other changes, including limiting drop boxes and the provision of absentee ballots, that amount to micromanaging voting rules better left to the relevant state statutes and municipal decision-making.
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The question we should ask ourselves is why do we need to make these changes? What problem is it that we’re trying to solve?
The answers usually given are “security” and “preventing fraud.” Yet election after Maine election, there’s no evidence – none – that there are any significant numbers of ballots cast illegally or inappropriately. Legal charges are so rare they make headlines.
Curtis perceived this. In a hand-written addition to the release, he said, “The real issue is not fraud. The issue is people’s right to vote.”
We shouldn’t be too complacent about Maine’s record, even though it places us regularly in the top three among states. Participation in presidential elections has ticked up recently, in large part due to a sense of national crisis those elections have done little to dispel.
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Yet the United States continues to lag well behind other countries in turnout, and this raises a fundamental question: If substantial numbers of Americans think it not worth their while to vote even in the most important elections, can we say our democracy is truly healthy?
I do not believe that Question 1, should it pass, will have dire consequences for voting participation; most people will find a way. Still, it’s hard to see that it would do any good.
Encouraging people to vote, and to fully understand their choices, is a far more pressing concern.
Douglas Rooks
Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. The author of four books, his new study of the Ken Curtis administration is due next year. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Maine Question 1 the latest effort to scale back right to vote: Rooks
[SRC] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maine-1-just-latest-effort-090301081.html
